Magazine clippings I used to cut out of newspapers and the music press back in my youth.
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The Residents tour of Oz was without a doubt one of the strangest live performances I'd ever experienced and also one of the best.Richard Conrad gets The Residents manager on the phone all the way from San Francisco for a bit of background info on the tour.

John Willsteed, an ex Brisbane lad himself joins the ranks of the Go-Betweens.

"I'd guess 87 or '88, The Courier-Mail or The Sunday Mail.
Maybe I'm just making excuses for sloppy journalism but I have a suspicion "Wilstead" was a deliberate incorrect spelling at his request to keep the taxman away!" - Richard Conrad.

Another from Richard Conrad, I remember when this was going down - I laughed my ass off.Doesn't anyone remember The Sacred Cows? Blame Mel Brooks for the decline of western civilization I say!!!

"This article resulted in some current affairs show flying the Dockers' Paulie Stewart (who I can now confess is a mate of mine) to Brisbane for a TV debate with the preacher; they put him up at the Sheraton the night before. We partied all night in Paulie's hotel room with a bunch of friends, running up a huge bill on the TV station's tab, & several of us crashed the night there. Remember Paulie looking a total wreck the next morning, crawling straight out of bed when reception rang & went straight down to the studio's waiting taxi unwashed and unchanged in a grotty Bonds white singlet. Best line on air from Paulie during the debate: "If Jesus was alive today he'd be a Dockers fan". Gold."

More in a series of posts from Richard Conrad with this article on the Shepherd brothers.

"If Brad was 24, this was 1985, so was in The Sunday Mail.Usually had a staff photographer take the pix but couldn't talk one into going to the Mansfield Tavern at midnight or whenever it was, so I took this shot. I was quite pleased with the pic. I like the looks on Brad & Murray's faces.First saw the Gurus at the Jump Club in Collingwood; late 82 or early 83. Great night."

Thanks to Richard Conrad for sending me this article he did on Lubricated Goat back in the late 80s.

"I did a column called "Pub Rock" for The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney from about 88 to mid-90.
Back then it was pretty unusual to get the local indie stuff into the mainstream press, but that was the buzz for me. Didn't date any of these clippings but they're somewhere in that 88-90 patch."

"I was a rock journo pretty constantly from '81 to 1990; I quit the Sunday Telegraph in 1990. .... next stops, Glastonbury & Reading festivals, but didn't write a word, which was a nice change, but paying for tickets was a rude shock. I think Mike Colman is still a sports writer, but on The Courier-Mail now ." Read about it here.

On the 30th anniversary of the disappearance of Azaria Chamberlain, Brisbane’s ugliest punk band, The Black Assassins, release long lost video footage of their song AZARIA on YouTube.

The song AZARIA tells the story of 8-week old baby Azaria, who was taken by a dingo while she slept in a tent in a campaigning ground at Uluru (Ayres Rock) in central Australia, on 17th August 1980.

Azaria’s mother, Lindy Chamberlain, was convicted of the murder of her baby on false forensic evidence and sentenced to life in prison in 1982. She was released just over 3 years later. Her conviction was overturned, but Azaria’s case is still open and unsolved. Azaria's body has never been found and her disappearance is one of the great mysteries of Australian folklore.

The lyrics of The Black Assassins’ song AZARIA offer the possibility that Azaria may still be alive.

This previously unseen footage in AZARIA is from one The Black Assassins’ more notorious gigs, and features a rare glimpses of the band’s faces, as they performed this night without their trademark black balaclavas.

The occasion was The Black Assassins’ Christmas Nativity show at a gig with 3 other bands (Kingswood Trio, The Lamingtons, Stranger) at AHEPA Hall in West End, Brisbane, Australia, on 17 December 1981.

The balaclavas were off as the band presented a “musical” – their songs woven into a particularly ugly reinterpretation of the classic nativity play on the birth of baby Jesus. Keyboardist, Sirhan Chapman played the Virgin Mary, bass player Ruby Oswald played Joseph, drummer Lee Harvey Hinckley was the Bethlehem Innkeeper, and guitarist Mohammed EL Jackal appeared as the three-head wise man and later the shepherd boy. This performance also featured George the rotting big yellow dog playing the dingo, who in the theatrics between the songs, stole a meat baby Jesus on cue, prompting the Virgin Mary to yell: “A dingo took my baby”.

The video of the gig was filmed 29 years ago by the late Tony Brassington, on a domestic VHS video camera in very low light, and managed to capture the grungy and chaotic nature of the band. The gig was raided and closed down by the Queensland Police just after The Black Assassins got off stage, stopping the performance of the final band of the night the Kingswood Trio.

WARNING: Black Assassins' performances can offend all of your senses and are not for the feint hearted. The footage in AZARIA is rated R (for Repugnant) and includes canine mastication scenes.